Saturday, October 21, 2017

Some reflections on the
relation between civilisation and violence, peace and war, bio-politics and
necro-politics

Introduction: ‘I can’t believe I am protesting this shit again’

Throughout the world today we increasingly see
a reversal of what was in early modernity too often optimistically considered an
irreversible linear civilizational process. In the past there was a firm
belief, at least in the west, that we humans were progressing from a society
based on arbitrariness, law-lessness, intolerance, unrestrained exploitation of
humans and natural resources, and more or less generalized authoritarianism and
violence to a more peaceful society increasingly regulated by the rule of law, democracy,
tolerance towards otherness, measured exploitation of people and an
exploitation of natural resources aware of the limited availability of these
resources and the need to protect nature and create ecologically sustainable
futures. Today we see those earlier forms of relationality re-invading social
space with authoritarianism, sexism, racism and the unbridled exploitation of people
and resources on the rise. ‘I can’t believe I am protesting this shit again’
said a banner carried by a woman opposed to US president Trump’s proposed
introduction of laws restricting women’s access to abortion clinics. So firm is
the idea that we ought to be progressing towards an increasingly peaceful,
tolerant, lawful society that these intrusions of micro and macro forms of
authoritarianism, domination and violence into social space are seen as
unusual. They are also defined popularly and by some analysts as ‘a crisis’
such as when the ‘rise of racist violence’ is defined as a crisis.

The idea that the appearances of these micro
or macro forms of oppression, exploitation and violence represent in themselves
a crisis is based on particular conceptions of the relation between ‘peaceful
civilized reality’ and ‘violent uncivilized reality’. It is those conceptions
that need to be challenged if we are to better understand the relation between
violent and non-violent forms of existence in the world today. So let us begin
by examining what these conceptions entail.

Civilisation as negation or repression of
violence

To begin with,
and as the chosen terminology ‘peaceful civilized reality’ and ‘violent
uncivilized reality’ already indicates, in these dominant conceptions we have
an association of violence with barbarism and non-violence with civilization.
Now as far as the relation between these two orders is concerned, this is seen
in two ways: The first as a relation of negation and the second as a relation
of repression. Negation involves the idea that wherever civilization comes democracy,
the rule of law and reason displace and replace the violent and barbaric rule
of authoritarianism, arbitrariness. The latter simply disappear as the former
consolidate themselves into a new civilized order. Repression on the other hand
involves the different idea that the new civilized non-violent order is a
continuous process of taming violence, cruelty and savagery. The capacity and
the tendency towards violence is always there and the function of civilization
is to stop this capacity and tendency from materializing. What distinguishes
negation from repression is that in the first conception civilization is seen
as eradicating violence entirely wherever it manages to institutionalise itself,
while in the second civilization is in a continuous struggle with the violent
order of life that is always there in a latent form and is always ready to rear
its head wherever and whenever civilization falters or weakens.

It could be said
that negation as a conception belongs to an early optimistic phase of modernity
where the belief in the capacity of civilized non-violent life to spread and
entrench itself was strong and where for some people at least there was a
palpable experience of a retreat in the forms of life ruled by authoritarianism
and where violence prevailed. Today, repression is a far more popular
conception as it can make sense of an experience of decline in the colonizing
momentum of the democracy-tolerance-rule of law assemblage and can help explain
the re-emergence of the micro and macro violent forms of life mentioned above.
But also the belief that there is a struggle between the forces of civilization
and the forces of despotism and violence with each representing a different set
of antagonistic interests. Thus while the optimism of the idea of ‘negation’
has disappeared, the idea of ‘repression’ maintains it in a more qualified way.
It stages a situation where, on one hand, it allows for a pessimistic outlook
which can make sense of a reality where racist, nationalist, ethnic,
homophobic, sexist and other forms of violence is on the rise, continuously
rearing their head, but on the other hand, it offers the optimistic promise
that there are forces, from education to policing, that are fighting against
this uncivilized order and which, if supported, can still prevail and perform
their repressive function and allow the civilized order of life to prevail.

But there is an
even greater optimism underlying this conception of the repressive relation
between civilization and uncivilized orders of life: it is the idea that they
belong to two different and antagonistic political and moral orders. It is a
version of a struggle between good and evil where the two can easily be
distinguished from each other and where ‘any reasonable normal person’ would
know where they stand and which side to support in this struggle. In this mode
of thinking, the inability of the civilized order to tame violence, such as the
situation we find ourselves in today, constitutes a ‘crisis’ (defined as an
intrusion of evil into the space of goodness) which will continue for as long
as violence and its source are not properly domesticated.

This same
relation between civilization and barbarism, and between good and evil, is also
the lense through which some see, with a slightly simplified Foucauldian gaze,
the relation between an imagined civilized democratic good government and an
imagined barbaric violent bad government: the first is a government that is
primarily interested in the politics of fostering of life; a government that rules
through an interest in controlling the forces and mechanisms that shape the
physiological and psychological health of its population. It is a government
that maintains itself in power through these bio-political practices. The
second is a government that has no interest in the lives of those it rules but
rather in the way it maintains power over them repressively. Such a government
rules though the control of demonstrative and actual violence and the
technologies of death and domination. It is a government that maintains itself through
its necro-political practices. Similar to the way the relation between
civilized and violent modes of existence, as examined above, is conceived,
bio-politics is seen as flourishing either through the displacement and
negation of the primacy of the necro-political or through the repression of the
necro-political. And in much the same way, necro-political spaces when they
intrude are seen in themselves as constituting a crisis, as blotch on the
bio-political landscape, a failure of the bio-political to saturate political
space with its civilized logic.

Violence as foundational to the civilizing process

While there are clearly some important
differences between the conception of the relation between civilization and
violence as one of negation and as one of repression, they nonetheless both
work by creating a radical difference between the two. In both, as we have
seen, civilizational forces and violent forces, bio-political forces and
necro-political forces are antagonistic to each other and are seen as having
nothing in common. There is, however, a third way of conceiving the relation
between civilized spaces and spaces of violence which highlights forms of dependency
between the two, a relation that the conceptions examined above disallow us to
perceive and understand. In this third conception, civilized peaceful space,
even though it might be aiming to repress the spaces of violence, it is also,
paradoxically, dependent on it for its very existence.

A good introduction into this relation is what
Marx has called ‘Primitive Accumulation’. In his critique of political economy,
Marx ridicules the story classical economic theory tells itself about the
origin of wealth and whereby wealth begins when, unlike the majority of people
who unthinkingly live for the present and spend what they have, a group of
people decide to think for the future. They start living a frugal and thrifty
life and in doing so manage to save the money that becomes the original capital
accumulation. Marx argues that there is no historical evidence of this kind of
accumulation ever occurring. In fact, he argues, most early forms of
accumulation of capital occur in the form of violent appropriation of wealth
like theft, piracy and plunder. In this sense, civilised capitalism has its
origins in what Marx then called ‘primitive accumulation’. What’s more as the
argument was later developed by radical political economists, capitalism is
continuously in need of such a ‘primitive accumulation’ which historically most
often took the form of violent colonial appropriation of wealth, or the
creation of spaces of extreme exploitation of people and resources.

Here, then, we have a very different
conception of the relation between ‘civilised space’ and the space of violence.
Civilised space is not antagonistic to violence but has violence as its very
historical and structural foundation. This is not specific to capitalist
primitive accumulation. Though primitive accumulation draws our attention to
the more generalized phenomenon where civilization is founded on violence. We
can sit in a very civilized and cosmopolitan restaurant and eat a particularly
pleasant and well-presented piece of steak, but behind this experience and at
its very foundation lies the killing of an animal. This is no different from
enjoying a nice cosmopolitan cup of coffee in Tel Aviv and forgetting the
violence towards Palestinians which has made this experience possible.
Likewise, we could enjoy the peace and the health facilities that the Assad
regime provided some of its population and forget the people languishing in its
prisons, or the populations that have been massacred with chemical weapons, and
which made ‘peace and health facilities’ in some other places possible to
experience. Just as civilization is grounded in violence, so is bio-politics
grounded in necro-politics: some are made to die in order for others to be made
to live.

Perhaps one of the most important
ramifications of thinking the relation between civilized bio-political and
violent necro-political modes of existence in this way is a radically different
conception of what constitutes a crisis. In the first section we looked at how
crisis is perceived as the very existence of violence in what should be a
peaceful civilized space. This can only be true if we believe that civilization
and violence are opposites and that civilization aims at eradicating violence.
But if we take as our starting point that civilizational bio-political
existence needs violent spaces as a condition of its emergence we arrive at a
different conception of crisis. This is because, first of all, we arrive at a
different conception of civilization. Instead of saying that civilization is
the process of eradicating or repressing violence, we say that civilization is
the art of hiding or concealing from people the violence needed for them to
experience a peaceful civilized existence. Colonialism by locating the space of
violent necro-political appropriation in a space geographically remote from the
metropolis used geographical separation as a mode of concealment. The citizens
of London did not have to experience the necro-political dimension of governing
India that was at the foundation of their civilized existence. But the
technologies of concealment are different when necro-political space is within
the nation such as in a colonial settler society like Australia or Israel, or
in an authoritarian regime such that of Baathist Syria. Indeed it can be said
that what makes some nations more civilized than other is their capacity to
hide their foundational necro-political violence from their citizens. Even more
so, we can also say that the wealthier a nation is, the more sophisticated are
the mechanisms of concealment at its disposal. It is from this perspective that
we arrive at a different conception of crisis: crisis is not the emergence of
violence amid peaceful civilized space since this violence is always there and civilized
space needs it. Rather, crisis is the failure of the mechanisms of concealment.
It is when the foundational violence that was concealed seeps into the peaceful
interior where it is not supposed to appear that makes the people occupying
those violent free spaces experience a ‘crisis’.

Conclusions

From the above we can offer a couple of
tentative theses relating to Syria:

1.The difference between the state of war and the state of peace in Syria
is not a difference between a state where a civilized bio-political imperative
ruled and where a necro-political order has replaced it.

2.One of the key differences between bio-political and necro-political
space is that the repressive government of bio-political spaces involves the
primacy of policing while the repressive domination of necro-political spaces
involves the primacy of war. The nature of the crisis that existed in Syria
prior to the current war was that already at that time policing against certain
sections of the population took the form of a war of eradication. Therefore
what we have today is an extension rather than an emergence of the space of war
and necro-politics.

3.The provision of health and the entire bio-political network of pre-war
Syria was founded on an extensive necro-political order which constituted the
foundation of its bio-political order. That is, the Syrian regime was already
predisposed to treat a large part of its population as enemies that need to be
eradicated rather than as citizens whose quality of life needed to be
maximised. When one speaks of a return to the norm in Syria this is the norm.

4.Non-Syrian organisations aiming to intervene in Syrian space have had
to face a particular situation: It is not that the State was no longer able to
provide health for a section of the population. Nor is it simply that the State
had no interest in the provision of health for this same section of the
population.It is that the State had an
interest in the extermination of such a population as part of its strategy to
lay the foundation of its post-war bio-political order. Health organisations
are not operating where governmental bio-politics has failed. They are
operating where governmental necro-politics is being practiced successfully.

Saturday, October 7, 2017

A couple of weeks ago the Arab
Council Australia issued this statement:

Arab Council Australia is proud to stand together with other
groups in support of marriage equality.

People who identify as LGBTIQ are an integral part of our
community and are entitled to the same freedoms and rights and the recognition
before the law as every other citizen in this country.

Arab Council Australia stands by its values and works tirelessly
on combating discrimination. inequality and injustice in all its forms.

As Arab Australians, we know all too well the pain of exclusion
and discrimination. In knowing this, how could we stand by and allow this hurt
to be inflicted on to others – let alone our own?

We acknowledge the diversity of views in our community on the
issue of marriage equality. This diversity reflects our democracy and the
freedoms we enjoy. We also recognise that equality for some is not equality at
all and that selective equality is fundamentally against justice.

Arab Council Australia believes that a survey of the population
was neither necessary nor desirable. However, we are here now. Let us hope that
the outcome upholds the principles of human rights, justice and equality.

We look forward to the day when we are not as driven by our
fears but more by our love and wanting the best that life can bring to all
peoples.

Please join us in ensuring that everyone is treated fairly and
equally under the law.

Last week, Mr. Antoine Kazzi, the
editor in chief of the Lebanese Australian newspaper El Telgraph, used his
paper to publish this attack on the Arab Council and on its CEO, Randa Kattan.
Here is what he wrote:

Et tu Brute? The Arab Council or the Arabic Communities Council has
lost its eligibility to shoulder the trust the community has placed in it. It
no longer represents its aspirations and it is no longer the voice that raises
its concerns. Rather, its CEO now chirps away as she pleases, speaks in her own
name and presents her personal opinions while deluding people into thinking
that she is speaking for the Council.

Her
excellency, the CEO was not satisfied with supporting same-sex marriage, which the
vast majority of the community rejects, in her individual capacity, but she issued
an insolent statement expressing her pride in saying «yes» to same sex marriage
under the banner of the Council, singing out of tune and against the direction
of the communal tide.

There
might be many reasons behind this “courageous” position, one being that the
council has been falling apart for many years now, has lost its shine and has
become just another name added to the names of many surviving on Government
grants. So perhaps the CEO, using the method of ‘go against the tide and you’ll
be noticed’, thought that this was the chance to strike to bring the council
back into centre stage and give it back some of its fading shine. But her move
destroyed whatever was left of its credibility.

We
ask her excellency the CEO who is so dying to say “yes” what will Arab Council now
do on international women’s day which it used to celebrate every year and where
awards were distributed to highly achieving women and what word will be used to
refer to this event?

Goodbye
Arab Council. God has mercy on the one who knows his limitations and stops at
them. And the last and most important question we ask it to the board, who include
some mature and sensible people: Does the opinion of the Arab Council’s CEO represent them or has she deluded herself
into trying to build up whatever is left from the council? Or does the board want
a new Clover Moore in the midst of our community? For if liberation, open
mindedness and modernity look like this, we are proud to remain on the list of the
reactionaries and the culturally strict… those who have a male father and a female
mother.

And
who knows maybe her Excellency might decide to open an Arab Council branch on
Oxford Street in Paddington to serve the needs of those who she’s proud of.

This is a deplorable text on so many
levels. But before I say anything about it let me say to the English reader
that if you found part of the editor’s text incomprehensible it is not because
I am bad at translating from Arabic to English. It is because the Arabic text
itself is in places seriously incomprehensible and badly written and edited. I
know I am already putting the chief editor in a bad light saying that his piece
is neither well written nor well edited but that is unfortunately the case. Another
technical deficiency of the text in so far as it is written by a journalist is
that it lacks the most basic research: Why wonder if the CEO is speaking for herself
or for the Arab Council when a simple phone call would have been sufficient to
know how the statement came about? In my case a simple conversation on
messenger allowed me to know that the Arab Council’syy board voted on this text
and it was endorsed by seven out of ten board members. But I suppose a clear-cut
fact would not have lent itself to the poetics of innuendos that Mr. Kazzi
engages in.

The text’s obsession with ‘who represents
the community?’ and the idea that ‘the community’ is some kind of monolithic
entity is one of the least helpful illusions fostered and encouraged by the
multiculturalism of the late twentieth century. It is a fantasy that has always
united racists and people who have aspirations to be ‘community leaders’. It
has no basis in facts but clearly some people find it hard to let go of the
idea.

The fact of the matter, as is obvious
to any reasonable person, is that Arab communities in Australia show similar
tendencies as the rest of Australia. Certainly, Christian and Muslim religious organisations
are important and they have a large population that is more likely to be
conservative in outlook on same sex marriage. But they are far from being the
only game in town. Arabs like all Australians are more likely to support same
sex marriage if they live in the inner city rather than in the suburbs or in
the country, they are more likely to support it if they are secular rather than
religious, they are more likely to support it if they have an urban rather than
a rural background and they are more likely to support it if they are tertiary
educated than if they are not and the list goes on. Even if we accept the
editor in chief’s argument that an overwhelming majority of Arab Australians
are not supportive of same sex marriage, and this is not as much of a foregone
conclusion as he likes to think, are those who support the yes vote not
supposed to have ‘community organisations’ that speak in their name? Mr
Azzi’s text shows a disturbing logic of communal excommunication towards anyone
who is contemplating to support the yes vote in the plebiscite.

Take me for instance, when the Arab
Council issued this statement I saw it on Facebook and was heartened to read
it. I left a message expressing how happy I was that they’ve written it. I was
not the only one. Hundreds of Arab-background Australians liked it. Many
Arab-background gay people commented to thank the council for their stand. Now
all of these people myself included might not be the majority of Arabs but Mr
Azzi needs to get out of his conservative communal hole and stop thinking that we
are negligible. We are not. And it is he who has to adjust to our
existence, not us who need to think of ourselves as communally illegal because
the Bishop, the Sheikh, the newspaper editor and the three or four conservative
financiers who finance community newspapers think so.

Historically, the Arab Council has
always offered a different kind of leadership within the community to the
conservative leadership of the church and the mosque and the local media financed
by moneyed Arabs with a conservative bent. The Arab council was ‘Arab’ when
narrow nationalists wanted it to be Lebanese. It was secular when others wanted
it to be religious. It has had a healthy number of women among its leaders when
other Arab institutions remained as ever male dominated, it has been vocally
anti-zionist when other institutions had opted for quietism, and most
importantly it has invariably articulated the struggle against racism towards
Arabs to as many others Australian struggles for justice as is possible, be
they the struggles of indigenous people or women or refugees or other excluded
and mistreated minorities. And sure enough it has a long history of supporting
struggles against homophobia. In short let me then reiterate that the Arab Council
represents the outlook of many Arab-Australians and actively helps many more in
their struggle to lead a decent life. It certainly has never made a claim to
represent ‘the community’ as if it is some unified entity. But nor should
anybody else make such a ridiculous claim.

This, however, is the least
disturbing aspects of Mr Kazzi’s text. What is worse is the attempt to
humiliate a woman who has a long and brilliant record as a community activist.
The mocking, ‘her excellency’, ‘chirping’, all this smacks of seriously
unchecked misogyny that extends towards Clover Moore. Apparently Clover Moore
is not a suitable model for Lebanese background women to follow. Nor would the
ex-governor Marie Bashir be by those standards. Perhaps Mr. Kazzi thinks he is.
He is after all supposedly concerned about the fate of ‘International woman’s day’
(though I am still struggling to understand what exactly he is saying here). Mr
Kazzi should know that this pseudo-caring about women like the eternal ‘we put
women on a pedestal’-mode of thinking does not fool anybody: it has accompanied
misogynistic discourse forever. He should apologise to Randa Kattan for this
ridiculous mocking tone.

Perhaps Mr. Kazzi feels so strongly about this issue of same
sex marriage that it has made him lose all sense of proportion. He certainly
goes way more than the usual ‘we don’t care who you love we just want to
protect the institution of marriage’-type of conservative opposition to same
sex marriage. His pride in those who have ‘a male father and female mother’ is
a discourse of homophobic hate destined to hurt every child who doesn’t have a
father and a mother, before being a discourse of hate for those who support
plural forms of familial arrangements. At the end of the day, this is the worst
aspect of this unfortunate piece of editorializing. It is hateful. It teaches
people that you need to try and mock, humiliate and obliterate those you
disagree with. If I was the Australian state looking for what fosters a culture
of ‘radicalisation’ among young people, I would consider this culture where
people are taught not to differentiate between disagreeing with someone and
wanting to humiliate and obliterate them, as just as responsible as the radical
Imams preaching their discourse of hate. Mr. Kazzi’s text does not differ much
in its tone and in its content from this kind of murderous preaching. And it is
very concerning that this is a text produced by the editor in chief of an
important community newspaper.